What could Friday mean, to a person who's retired? Well, it still means TGIF. I don't know why, but it still has the implication of a time of freedom...even though it's all free for me and my cohort wrinklies.
A teacher friend of mine said that it took her two years to realize, after her retirement, that she could go shopping at Mission Valley Center on any day of the week, not just Saturday.
Friday to me nowadays means my TOPS meeting here at the Senior Center. I have been in this group for years and am now down about ten pounds from my top weight. It was about 14 pounds, but I have been eating unwisely of late.
The Reader's Digest has announced its perfect diet for 2011, and lo and behold, if it isn't the old Atkins plan perfectly reproduced. Just eat the good stuff. I was on the Atkins diet in the seventies and I was gorgeous. And just skinny enough. It's hard to go back on it, though. Mostly because of how much I love toast and jam. Maybe I should to back to that old-new plan and allow self a toast with jam on Sunday morning. And no donuts at church. Hmmm....
Belatedly, we'll come to the word, "gizzard." What a perfect name to call a reprehensible organ that digests chickens' food. Tough (as shoe-leather), tasteless, utterly un-appetizing---and yet, there are people who love them. Today my silver guy tells how his father loved gizzards. My own grandfather, also born on Tennessee, was a gizzard-lover. Of course, my grandmother's fried chicken would make you love any part of that bird. One time, some Mexicans told my father that if they shot enough little birds (I don't know what the breed was) and cooked them up and fed them to me, my asthma would go away. My mother's brother went out with his friend Stuart and bagged a large number of the little birds and they cooked them up and we all ate of them. (Wheeze.) Just for a lark, so to speak, my grandmother and grandmother fried up a whole panful of tiny gizzards for my grandfather, and presented them, crispy and brown on a platter. He gobbled them up and pronounced them delicious. They didn't cure deafness either. All for today, YAZZYBEL
Friday, January 14, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Do not make oven-scrambled eggs while using the computer
.....while using the computer in another room! I was searching for a small good Cuisinart coffee maker while the eggs were baking away. They went from a little too creamy to SHOE LEATHER in all too short a time. We ate them anyway.
"Shoe leather" was my mother's family's term for anything tough and hard. Not just leather, mind you. Shoe leather, the toughest and hardest. I wra pped my bacon and hard egg in a (hard) tortilla which I had also left in the oven while searching the Internet. I just finished it all, and it was delicious!!!
My mother's father's family were from Tennessee. They used the most flowing and descriptive language, which was never vulgar nor obscene. Well, almost never vulgar nor obscene. Mother did not want us to become nurses, unless we were willing to be "Miss Carrie Potts." But that is about as far as it went. And the richness of the similes and the frequency with which her speech was salted with them, added a great deal to her biggest gift. She was a story-teller. I have never known anyone more gifted with that quality. If a married couple in Brownsville were said to have quarreled, my mother could recite the quarrel to her listeners word by word as it was spoken, even though it might have taken place a mile away. Though I was mostly silent in those days, I was an appreciative hearer of those recountings.
Mother knew grammar very well, and studied Latin in high school. She also studied French and taught me to sing, "Il etait une bergere, ron, ron, pati-patapon," while I was still very young. Educations were very limited in her day compared to the things kids study nowadays. She never cut up a frog, much less a kitten,as far as I know, and she surely would have commented upon it. But her language was in her veins and in her bones, and her education expanded and secured her in it. What a gift! When I view all the tongue-tied and nonverbal kids nowadays, struggling with "like" and even "uh," I feel that our school system has done its worst work in taking out oral reading, recitation, grammar study from Grades 1-12.
No cooking today. I blush for the tough eggs, though Taterton ate them without complaint. Kitchen still in disarray and parted out. Hasta mañana, and I thank one of my nameless sisters for the how-to of making the tilde. YAZZYBEL
"Shoe leather" was my mother's family's term for anything tough and hard. Not just leather, mind you. Shoe leather, the toughest and hardest. I wra pped my bacon and hard egg in a (hard) tortilla which I had also left in the oven while searching the Internet. I just finished it all, and it was delicious!!!
My mother's father's family were from Tennessee. They used the most flowing and descriptive language, which was never vulgar nor obscene. Well, almost never vulgar nor obscene. Mother did not want us to become nurses, unless we were willing to be "Miss Carrie Potts." But that is about as far as it went. And the richness of the similes and the frequency with which her speech was salted with them, added a great deal to her biggest gift. She was a story-teller. I have never known anyone more gifted with that quality. If a married couple in Brownsville were said to have quarreled, my mother could recite the quarrel to her listeners word by word as it was spoken, even though it might have taken place a mile away. Though I was mostly silent in those days, I was an appreciative hearer of those recountings.
Mother knew grammar very well, and studied Latin in high school. She also studied French and taught me to sing, "Il etait une bergere, ron, ron, pati-patapon," while I was still very young. Educations were very limited in her day compared to the things kids study nowadays. She never cut up a frog, much less a kitten,as far as I know, and she surely would have commented upon it. But her language was in her veins and in her bones, and her education expanded and secured her in it. What a gift! When I view all the tongue-tied and nonverbal kids nowadays, struggling with "like" and even "uh," I feel that our school system has done its worst work in taking out oral reading, recitation, grammar study from Grades 1-12.
No cooking today. I blush for the tough eggs, though Taterton ate them without complaint. Kitchen still in disarray and parted out. Hasta mañana, and I thank one of my nameless sisters for the how-to of making the tilde. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Oh, I am back on!!
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the blog. I was kicked out on my kazoo. Couldn't even open the page. Mourned all day, wrote to my kids and my daughter in law has saved the day for me. Thank you, --------!! (I forgot to ask her if I could use her name.)
WOW. What a relief. I'm back!!
Yesterday I promised to tell how Theodore got to be Taterton. We had a Scandinavian friend who always called Theodore, "Thader." I don't know if that's really the word for Theodore in Swedish, or if it was merely his fancy, but I really liked it. The kids liked it too, but, in the way of my language-manipulating family, they called their father, "Tater."
He didn't mind, and I kind of liked it. It has a homey sound.
When Theodore left Mission Hills and bought a small house in Chula Vista, our middle son, Gregory, dubbed it, "Taterton Manor."
It happens to be the very house where we live now. Taterton and I live in Taterton Manor. And that is all there is to tell about that part of the story.
Again , we got word and memory all in one. And now to food. Kitchen is still torn up, so we are still eating out a lot. But this morning I made bacon in the oven, and then scrambled eggs in the oven. Very delicious, oven-scrambled eggs. My mother had told me long ago that many restaurants in that era made oven-scrambled eggs, as did hospitals and dormitories and other places that made large quantities of scrambled eggs. I beat a little heavy cream, salt and pepper into 2 eggs, poured them into the cooky sheet, and put them into the oven. From time to time, I opened it up and stirred with a spatula of the pancake turner variety. It took quite a while, why I do not know, but in time there they were--perfect creamy scrambled eggs.
Yesterday for lunch the weather was fair and I went out onto the back patio and made us a lunch on the camp stove. Ground beef, onion, green pepper were frazzled in the skillet, and after they were done I laid a few thin slices of cheddar over the top. I had three tortillas and I laid them one by one on the (gas) flame of the campstove. I guess it's propane. They browned nicely and I gave Theodore 2 tacos and I had one. How delicious they were! I always toast tortillas by laying them on a gas flame instead of frying them. Though once in a while I "fry" them in grapeseed spray oil in a skillet or on a cooky sheet in the oven. That's all for today and glory be to God for getting back on the blog and having a daughter in law smart enough to get me there. YAZZYBEL
WOW. What a relief. I'm back!!
Yesterday I promised to tell how Theodore got to be Taterton. We had a Scandinavian friend who always called Theodore, "Thader." I don't know if that's really the word for Theodore in Swedish, or if it was merely his fancy, but I really liked it. The kids liked it too, but, in the way of my language-manipulating family, they called their father, "Tater."
He didn't mind, and I kind of liked it. It has a homey sound.
When Theodore left Mission Hills and bought a small house in Chula Vista, our middle son, Gregory, dubbed it, "Taterton Manor."
It happens to be the very house where we live now. Taterton and I live in Taterton Manor. And that is all there is to tell about that part of the story.
Again , we got word and memory all in one. And now to food. Kitchen is still torn up, so we are still eating out a lot. But this morning I made bacon in the oven, and then scrambled eggs in the oven. Very delicious, oven-scrambled eggs. My mother had told me long ago that many restaurants in that era made oven-scrambled eggs, as did hospitals and dormitories and other places that made large quantities of scrambled eggs. I beat a little heavy cream, salt and pepper into 2 eggs, poured them into the cooky sheet, and put them into the oven. From time to time, I opened it up and stirred with a spatula of the pancake turner variety. It took quite a while, why I do not know, but in time there they were--perfect creamy scrambled eggs.
Yesterday for lunch the weather was fair and I went out onto the back patio and made us a lunch on the camp stove. Ground beef, onion, green pepper were frazzled in the skillet, and after they were done I laid a few thin slices of cheddar over the top. I had three tortillas and I laid them one by one on the (gas) flame of the campstove. I guess it's propane. They browned nicely and I gave Theodore 2 tacos and I had one. How delicious they were! I always toast tortillas by laying them on a gas flame instead of frying them. Though once in a while I "fry" them in grapeseed spray oil in a skillet or on a cooky sheet in the oven. That's all for today and glory be to God for getting back on the blog and having a daughter in law smart enough to get me there. YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Naming names
Good morning!
Today I'll write about how Yazzybel came into being.
I was christened Linda Temple Longoria, after my mother. Her baptized name was Linda Proctor Temple, and I am kinda surprised she didn't give me the Proctor too with all the rest. They were hoping for a boy, and he would have been a Junior.
So when I turned out to be me, they seem to have gone into automatic mode when they named me.
I really never liked having my mother's name. I did not like being, "Little Linda," which I was around the house. But it never occurred to me to protest or to tell anyone how I felt, because to be honest, nobody ever asked me about such things. And truth to tell, I love the name, Linda. Beautiful in English, and, literally, "beautiful" in Spanish, it fits the bill for a wonderful girl's name.
In my middle age, it began to be a bit confusing, when my mother started signing her papers and checks, "Linda Temple Longoria," instead of Mrs. Benito Longoria--her version of women's lib, I guess. And I, divorced, had taken back my maiden name because of the Bilingual Program, of which again, more later. So I too was, "Linda Temple Longoria," and I didn't like it.
"WHY did you not choose a name different from yours, when you named me?" I asked once when I was visiting. After all, all my sisters had managed to be named after someone else. My mother was baffled at this rebellion after all those years.
"What could we have named you?" she asked, at a loss.
"Well, there's my Mexican grandmother, Ysabel," I said. "That's a beautiful name too." My mother sniffed. But she took umbrage, and for some time she took to addressing her letters to me to "Ysabel." She was living in North Carolina at that time, and my then-brother-in-law, a Southerner, once spotted an envelope and asked, "Who is this Yazzabel?" A natural pronunciation for an American reader. But we thought it was funny, and it became my nickname. One of my sisters with her little Lady-Bird-Johnson accent slid the name into "Yazzybel," and there it stuck. I am Yazzybel. I kind of like it; it's funny.
"Yazzy" is a name seen often amongst the Navajo (no connection). And there are Mexican variants such as Yetzabel and Guetzabel, whom I assume to be variations of Jezebel. (Let's go quickly past that one.) But you have read above of the birth of Yazzybel, who, having discovered the electric coffee maker in the garage, has put two and two together and doesn't have to wait for McDonald's coffee any longer.
There, you have had word and memory all in one again. No cooking but the coffee, for which Thank the Lord. And tomorrow, if you are good, I'll tell you how my husband Theodore became the Taterton. YAZZYBEL
Today I'll write about how Yazzybel came into being.
I was christened Linda Temple Longoria, after my mother. Her baptized name was Linda Proctor Temple, and I am kinda surprised she didn't give me the Proctor too with all the rest. They were hoping for a boy, and he would have been a Junior.
So when I turned out to be me, they seem to have gone into automatic mode when they named me.
I really never liked having my mother's name. I did not like being, "Little Linda," which I was around the house. But it never occurred to me to protest or to tell anyone how I felt, because to be honest, nobody ever asked me about such things. And truth to tell, I love the name, Linda. Beautiful in English, and, literally, "beautiful" in Spanish, it fits the bill for a wonderful girl's name.
In my middle age, it began to be a bit confusing, when my mother started signing her papers and checks, "Linda Temple Longoria," instead of Mrs. Benito Longoria--her version of women's lib, I guess. And I, divorced, had taken back my maiden name because of the Bilingual Program, of which again, more later. So I too was, "Linda Temple Longoria," and I didn't like it.
"WHY did you not choose a name different from yours, when you named me?" I asked once when I was visiting. After all, all my sisters had managed to be named after someone else. My mother was baffled at this rebellion after all those years.
"What could we have named you?" she asked, at a loss.
"Well, there's my Mexican grandmother, Ysabel," I said. "That's a beautiful name too." My mother sniffed. But she took umbrage, and for some time she took to addressing her letters to me to "Ysabel." She was living in North Carolina at that time, and my then-brother-in-law, a Southerner, once spotted an envelope and asked, "Who is this Yazzabel?" A natural pronunciation for an American reader. But we thought it was funny, and it became my nickname. One of my sisters with her little Lady-Bird-Johnson accent slid the name into "Yazzybel," and there it stuck. I am Yazzybel. I kind of like it; it's funny.
"Yazzy" is a name seen often amongst the Navajo (no connection). And there are Mexican variants such as Yetzabel and Guetzabel, whom I assume to be variations of Jezebel. (Let's go quickly past that one.) But you have read above of the birth of Yazzybel, who, having discovered the electric coffee maker in the garage, has put two and two together and doesn't have to wait for McDonald's coffee any longer.
There, you have had word and memory all in one again. No cooking but the coffee, for which Thank the Lord. And tomorrow, if you are good, I'll tell you how my husband Theodore became the Taterton. YAZZYBEL
Monday, January 10, 2011
What happened in Tucson
I guess everybody who writes has to write about the shootings in Tucson. I tried not to think about it too much all day yesterday, but it was still there when I went to bed and I found that I had something to say.
My husband and I did not hear about the shootings until late in the day on Saturday. We were busy and out all morning, distracted by the kitchen project in the afternoon, but late in the afternoon the talk on the robin was all about what had happened, so we turned on CNN.
There we heard the news of the tragedy, all incomplete, all awful. A disturbed young man stepped up to an elected Representative to the US Congress and shot her through the head as she conducted a meeting with constituents. On the side, he shot and killed six persons besides, and wounded twelve or so. As the newsgivers told us about this tragedy, the emotion coming from the screen was this: a kind of warped elation. "At last, something to chew on." The news industry serves a greedy monster. That is plain to see.
I want to focus on the two points that were most important to me.
When I heard that a nine year old girl had been killed, my feelings all went her way. And yesterday morning, when I learned who the little girl was, I wondered that the focus of the tragedy could be anybody else, no matter how important or beloved.
Nobody is more important than a nine year old girl in a family. Nobody more beloved. This little girl was a shining star. How can her family survive? Her mother, father, brother? That they are going to have to wake up day after day with her memory in their hearts, eyes, body, just wrenches my heart with compassion.
I grieve for the family of Christina Green. God be with all of us.
My second focus is on the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner. I 've heard all kinds of dancing around the subject, but this young man is clearly out of his mind. I heard some official call him a criminal yesterday. I have had lots of experience with our mental health system, and I'd like to say that it's crazier than the clients. I will talk more about that sometime, but for now I'd just like to say that people in this guy's condition are not responsible for their actions, however heinous they might be. We have to "get" somebody, don't we? Sometimes we can't "get" somebody. We have to reflect on our entire system and way of life. We have to make changes now so that some other unhappy American kid won't do the same thing in a year, two years, ten years. We cannot fix what Jared has done. We must look at ourselves and our nation. He is now in custody, thanks to the bravery of onlookers at the incident. He should be kept there. He should tell us everything in his mind, and of his associates and everything that led him to do this act. He can do this. He is lucid enough to post messages on all the social networks, apparently. He needs to be medicated (and you don't know how much I hate to say that.) I grieve for Jared. God be with all of us.
Well, t hat is all I will write about today. Shortly I have to go to McD's to get coffee and Egg McBiscuits as they are as good as anything for miles around, as we found out yesterday by fruitlessly driving the streets of Chula and Bonita for a leisurely breakfast. YAZZYBEL
My husband and I did not hear about the shootings until late in the day on Saturday. We were busy and out all morning, distracted by the kitchen project in the afternoon, but late in the afternoon the talk on the robin was all about what had happened, so we turned on CNN.
There we heard the news of the tragedy, all incomplete, all awful. A disturbed young man stepped up to an elected Representative to the US Congress and shot her through the head as she conducted a meeting with constituents. On the side, he shot and killed six persons besides, and wounded twelve or so. As the newsgivers told us about this tragedy, the emotion coming from the screen was this: a kind of warped elation. "At last, something to chew on." The news industry serves a greedy monster. That is plain to see.
I want to focus on the two points that were most important to me.
When I heard that a nine year old girl had been killed, my feelings all went her way. And yesterday morning, when I learned who the little girl was, I wondered that the focus of the tragedy could be anybody else, no matter how important or beloved.
Nobody is more important than a nine year old girl in a family. Nobody more beloved. This little girl was a shining star. How can her family survive? Her mother, father, brother? That they are going to have to wake up day after day with her memory in their hearts, eyes, body, just wrenches my heart with compassion.
I grieve for the family of Christina Green. God be with all of us.
My second focus is on the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner. I 've heard all kinds of dancing around the subject, but this young man is clearly out of his mind. I heard some official call him a criminal yesterday. I have had lots of experience with our mental health system, and I'd like to say that it's crazier than the clients. I will talk more about that sometime, but for now I'd just like to say that people in this guy's condition are not responsible for their actions, however heinous they might be. We have to "get" somebody, don't we? Sometimes we can't "get" somebody. We have to reflect on our entire system and way of life. We have to make changes now so that some other unhappy American kid won't do the same thing in a year, two years, ten years. We cannot fix what Jared has done. We must look at ourselves and our nation. He is now in custody, thanks to the bravery of onlookers at the incident. He should be kept there. He should tell us everything in his mind, and of his associates and everything that led him to do this act. He can do this. He is lucid enough to post messages on all the social networks, apparently. He needs to be medicated (and you don't know how much I hate to say that.) I grieve for Jared. God be with all of us.
Well, t hat is all I will write about today. Shortly I have to go to McD's to get coffee and Egg McBiscuits as they are as good as anything for miles around, as we found out yesterday by fruitlessly driving the streets of Chula and Bonita for a leisurely breakfast. YAZZYBEL
Sunday, January 9, 2011
No church!
Now, let's get this straight. I'm not a churchy person. But I am sorry to be having to miss church today.
My husband is a diabetic who must have breakfast, which he would normally make for himself while I am at church...but today he can't do so (see previous dismal pages)...so we must eat out.
We are spending a fortune on eating out poorly. It's increasingly hard to find a good cheap meal out. Somebody in this burg should be able to turn out a decent breakfast, including the cup of coffee, for $4.95. Decent for my husband means one or two slices of bacon, as he can't have the toast. But no--we have to support the outrageous real estate prices around here when we eat out. The food is the least of the restauraneur's expenses, I think. Loan payments, leases, waiters' salaries, insurances,---it is tragical and awful that we can't just serve up a decent little meal, with or without badly microwaved "potatoes", for a reasonable price. If not for the diabetes, we could have toast and microwave coffee at home....or even use the camp stove, which is now set up and ready. But he (we) have found that a very limited carb intake really does work best with his very imcompetent pancreas, so, eggs and bacon it is.
We'll go to McDonald's I guess. Yes, you can get a thin plastic plate of scrambled eggs and sausage for little money there. I am going to start carrying a couple of forks in my purse for those meals consumed at institutions that provide plastic forks. The trouble is that, down here in Chula Vista, cheaper restaurants have started turning terrible. At least in the protein department, for food, and in the general quality of the establishment. Is this a universal trend in the American economic system right now?
Incidentally, I 'd like to put in a word for the McDonald's breakfast. We have found, traveling on the road, that McD's is a very reliable place to have a light meal. We have never once been victims of anybody's Revenge when eating at one. And that is a real plus when you're traveling.
Today, not going to church, I had a longer time than usual to read the Sunday funnies. I read these comics and no more. Doonesbury, Dilbert, La Cucaracha,
Fusco Bros, Mother Goose and Grimm, Pickles, and Mutts. I have some difficulty reading now, and our local paper has reduced the comic strips to a ludicrous size. So sometimes I do not read Doonesbury if there are too many little words. I missed the death of Mike's mother, though I have caught the funeral. MUTTS is my favorite comic strip. It has everything I admire in a comic strip: few words, book-quality art, and gentle humor.
I spoke of food first today, and words and memories got short shrift. There is always manana (oh where oh where is that list of symbols, including the tilde?) so hasta that day, my dear readers. YAZZYBEL
My husband is a diabetic who must have breakfast, which he would normally make for himself while I am at church...but today he can't do so (see previous dismal pages)...so we must eat out.
We are spending a fortune on eating out poorly. It's increasingly hard to find a good cheap meal out. Somebody in this burg should be able to turn out a decent breakfast, including the cup of coffee, for $4.95. Decent for my husband means one or two slices of bacon, as he can't have the toast. But no--we have to support the outrageous real estate prices around here when we eat out. The food is the least of the restauraneur's expenses, I think. Loan payments, leases, waiters' salaries, insurances,---it is tragical and awful that we can't just serve up a decent little meal, with or without badly microwaved "potatoes", for a reasonable price. If not for the diabetes, we could have toast and microwave coffee at home....or even use the camp stove, which is now set up and ready. But he (we) have found that a very limited carb intake really does work best with his very imcompetent pancreas, so, eggs and bacon it is.
We'll go to McDonald's I guess. Yes, you can get a thin plastic plate of scrambled eggs and sausage for little money there. I am going to start carrying a couple of forks in my purse for those meals consumed at institutions that provide plastic forks. The trouble is that, down here in Chula Vista, cheaper restaurants have started turning terrible. At least in the protein department, for food, and in the general quality of the establishment. Is this a universal trend in the American economic system right now?
Incidentally, I 'd like to put in a word for the McDonald's breakfast. We have found, traveling on the road, that McD's is a very reliable place to have a light meal. We have never once been victims of anybody's Revenge when eating at one. And that is a real plus when you're traveling.
Today, not going to church, I had a longer time than usual to read the Sunday funnies. I read these comics and no more. Doonesbury, Dilbert, La Cucaracha,
Fusco Bros, Mother Goose and Grimm, Pickles, and Mutts. I have some difficulty reading now, and our local paper has reduced the comic strips to a ludicrous size. So sometimes I do not read Doonesbury if there are too many little words. I missed the death of Mike's mother, though I have caught the funeral. MUTTS is my favorite comic strip. It has everything I admire in a comic strip: few words, book-quality art, and gentle humor.
I spoke of food first today, and words and memories got short shrift. There is always manana (oh where oh where is that list of symbols, including the tilde?) so hasta that day, my dear readers. YAZZYBEL
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Saturday morning
Saturday morning, and the word is CASE.
When I went to school at Ellis Private School in Laredo TX oh so long ago, I learned that CASE is one of the==whats? Well, I'll rephrase. Nouns have CASE.
There is the Possessive Case.. "Linda's blog."
There is the Nominative Case. When the noun is doing the action. " Linda writes."
There is the Objective Case. Now Mrs. Ellis simplified the rules for her fourth graders. The noun in the objective case is the receiver of the action. "Mrs. Ellis taught Linda." (Also, which is really the dative, I believe, "Mrs. Ellis gave the papers to Linda." That is the noun following a preposition.)
However, in the fourth grade, she made it easy. If a noun were the receiver of an action, whether or not it was in a prepositional clause, that noun was in the OBJECTIVE CASE.
It only gets interesting when we substitute pronouns for the nouns. After all, that 's what pronouns are for.
Possessive Case. "My blog." (or our, his, hers and any number of others).
Nominative case. "I write."
Objective case. "Ideas come to me." Oh, the objective case looks different now.
Here is the point of the lesson: All these things have to be in agreement. If mother gives flowers to Sally, fine. But she also gave them to ME. So, "Mother gives flowers to Sally and ME." I cannot write the I- word in this context even as a bad example.
"I sent a message to she and her husband," someone wrote to me recently. OUCH. NO! BAD! You wrote the message for HER. What you do not realize is that "husband" is also in the objective case in that sentence, because objective-case nouns don't change in English. Too bad. There just has been too little teaching of grammar rules . Common sense, out there, fellow seekers.
This brings me to a problem I am experiencing with my blog. A few people have told me that they would like to post comments but cannot. I'd welcome your comments, my readers. But, alas, I am a nitwit when it comes to word processing or whatever I am doing, and do not know how to make this blog admit commenters.
There will be no mention of cooking today because the kitchen is still DOWN and I tried to make breakfast in the oven. Not too delicious. Now we have brought the kitchen still more down,and the toaster is removed as well as any other small appliance, so I guess we will be eating out. I have had NO coffee yet.
If I had room I would describe the wonders of a recent evening's sunset. Perhaps I should say, If I had words. A number of people were there, struck dumb with beautysuch as I have never seen before. I've never been with a group so united in spirit before, as I was with these strangers of varied races and languages, all moved beyond speech. Until tomorrow, YAZZYBEL
When I went to school at Ellis Private School in Laredo TX oh so long ago, I learned that CASE is one of the==whats? Well, I'll rephrase. Nouns have CASE.
There is the Possessive Case.. "Linda's blog."
There is the Nominative Case. When the noun is doing the action. " Linda writes."
There is the Objective Case. Now Mrs. Ellis simplified the rules for her fourth graders. The noun in the objective case is the receiver of the action. "Mrs. Ellis taught Linda." (Also, which is really the dative, I believe, "Mrs. Ellis gave the papers to Linda." That is the noun following a preposition.)
However, in the fourth grade, she made it easy. If a noun were the receiver of an action, whether or not it was in a prepositional clause, that noun was in the OBJECTIVE CASE.
It only gets interesting when we substitute pronouns for the nouns. After all, that 's what pronouns are for.
Possessive Case. "My blog." (or our, his, hers and any number of others).
Nominative case. "I write."
Objective case. "Ideas come to me." Oh, the objective case looks different now.
Here is the point of the lesson: All these things have to be in agreement. If mother gives flowers to Sally, fine. But she also gave them to ME. So, "Mother gives flowers to Sally and ME." I cannot write the I- word in this context even as a bad example.
"I sent a message to she and her husband," someone wrote to me recently. OUCH. NO! BAD! You wrote the message for HER. What you do not realize is that "husband" is also in the objective case in that sentence, because objective-case nouns don't change in English. Too bad. There just has been too little teaching of grammar rules . Common sense, out there, fellow seekers.
This brings me to a problem I am experiencing with my blog. A few people have told me that they would like to post comments but cannot. I'd welcome your comments, my readers. But, alas, I am a nitwit when it comes to word processing or whatever I am doing, and do not know how to make this blog admit commenters.
There will be no mention of cooking today because the kitchen is still DOWN and I tried to make breakfast in the oven. Not too delicious. Now we have brought the kitchen still more down,and the toaster is removed as well as any other small appliance, so I guess we will be eating out. I have had NO coffee yet.
If I had room I would describe the wonders of a recent evening's sunset. Perhaps I should say, If I had words. A number of people were there, struck dumb with beautysuch as I have never seen before. I've never been with a group so united in spirit before, as I was with these strangers of varied races and languages, all moved beyond speech. Until tomorrow, YAZZYBEL
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